


Touch Has a Memory

by shipatfirstsight



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Ben and Rey knew each other from the Jedi Temple, F/M, Force Bond, Freeform, I Don't Even Know, Implied Sexual Content, fluffy ending i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 20:04:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5798134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipatfirstsight/pseuds/shipatfirstsight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey had been so used to being no one for so long—just a lonely scavenger girl—that it had been hard to look at herself as someone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touch Has a Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a John Keats quote :)

"I realized I was thinking of you, and I began to wonder how long you'd been on my mind. Then it occurred to me: Since I met you, you've never left."

**_—_ (Unknown)**

Rey pushes up from the bed reluctantly. Her heartbeat and breathing haven’t slowed down to their normal rates yet, but she needs to go. She feels sticky and there’s a layer of dried sweat clinging to her skin that she’s desperate to get off; meeting in the desert probably wasn’t their best idea. She’ll need to use her ‘fresher before she gets back to the base, and she’s already late. She hasn’t made contact with anyone in a full day to let them know she’s all right, and if she doesn’t leave soon someone will come looking for her and she’s not sure she’ll ever be ready for that.

She pulls her clothes on, going around the room to find each article of clothing. She wishes, not for the first time, that the little abandoned hovel they had found had a ‘fresher of its own, but no such luck.

“Stay,” Kylo murmurs, as he does every time they do this; she always thinks he’s asleep, always thinks maybe this time she’ll be able to sneak away without him noticing, but he always does. Rey is never quite sure if his _stay_ is a request, or a demand, or a plea. He never makes any move to stop her, just says that one world, looking at her with longing and pain in his eyes. She can never bring herself to look at him when he says it, choosing instead to continue facing the door.

“I can’t,” she whispers back, as she does every time. She’s never quite sure if she fully means it. Maybe, if he pressed her hard enough, she _would_ stay with him in their little corner of the galaxy where he’s just Kylo and she’s just Rey, no other titles hanging over their heads. They ignore the fact that they’re supposed to be enemies in these stolen moments.

“Why not?” he asks, breaking his pattern. Normally, he lets her leave without complaint, and for a wild moment she’s not sure how to respond. He continues before she can answer him anyway, “We could stay here. Leave the war behind.”

Before he can stop it, she hears his thoughts through their bond. _Stop leaving me. Please._ He clams up after that; it’s almost like _she’s_ alone, and she hates that he won’t let her know how he’s really feeling.

Rey turns back to look at him, and bites her lip. She wishes she could just crawl back into bed with him—he is gloriously naked—wishes she could pretend she doesn’t have other duties and responsibilities. But she does, and so does he. “You know I can’t. It’s not about leaving you.”

“Then what is it about?” Kylo bites out, crossing his arms—the sheet covering him falls down, not enough for her to be embarrassed, but enough that she has to remind herself to focus on his face.

“I have a duty to the Jedi, to the Rebellion,” she reminds him. “And you’ve made it perfectly clear that you aren’t going to leave Snoke.”

They glare at each other angrily for a moment, reaching a stalemate as they always do. “You just don’t want to stay with me,” he says suddenly, and she almost laughs at the absurdity of such a ridiculous statement when not five minutes before she had been fighting with herself to leave. Rey can see though that he’s completely serious, and she gapes at him.

“I would stay with you if it didn’t mean people would die. I have a _responsibility,_ Kylo. Besides, you wouldn’t stay here with me anyway. _You’d_ leave, eventually. You’d go back to Snoke. I can’t stay here with you and ignore the problems and hope they go away.”

“Why not?” he sounds petulant, almost like a child. He sounds so different when it’s the two of them and they’re not actively trying to kill each other.

“Because it doesn’t work that way!” she yells, but for a moment she wishes it _could_ work that way. Everything is more difficult when he’s Kylo Ren, Snoke’s prodigy and Master of the Dark side, and when she’s Rey, Jedi-Knight-in-training. Everything is so simple when it’s just the two of them finding pleasure in each other’s arms.

“It could,” he says stubbornly, but there’s a hint of something like hope in his eyes; she knows he can senses her train of thought. “Here we can be Kylo and Rey, like you want. We can ignore everything else. Everything that’s happened.”

“Kylo,” she says softly, “I don’t want a part of you. I want all of you, or none of you. I know what you’ve done, and you know what I’ve done. But I’m not going to stay here and pretend that those things didn’t happen.”

“You could join me,” he suggests; he normally only brings that up when they’re fighting. Somehow, it’s harder when they’re not fighting to remember why she shouldn’t.

“You could join me,” she returns, knowing that neither of them is going to budge anytime soon, but unable to not voice the suggestion.

“Ah well,” he sighs, going back to looking annoyingly self-assured instead of defeated, which is how she feels, smirking up at her. “Snoke would probably have us hunted down anyway.”

“We could _probably_ take whoever he sent,” she jokes, softly, more reluctant than ever to lave.

“Between the two of us? It wouldn’t be a huge problem. More of an annoyance than anything really.” _We could take on the galaxy if we wanted_ , he says through their bond and for once, she doesn’t feel like challenging him.

She doesn’t want to leave him; she keeps looking back and forth between him and the door. “Just a few more minutes,” she says to the unspoken question hanging in the air. She peels her clothes back off, then walks toward him slowly. She tugs the cover down; he grips her hips in his hands. She leans down, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth, then swiping her tongue gently across his lips. He lifts her up with annoying ease, settling her over him.

_show her what she’d get if she stayed_ , Rey hears through the bond, and she’s not even sure if he’s conscious that the bond is open and she can hear him. But his fingers dance down her side, _lower_ and they hit a particularly sensitive spot and all thought is driven from her head.

* * *

 

“I don’t want to have to kill you,” he says as she leaves hours later, not fully sated despite his very best efforts, knowing they’ll have to do this again soon, and she looks back sadly at him.

“I don’t want to kill you either.”

_You’re going to have to make a choice,_ they both push at each other at the exact same time. It doesn’t make leaving any easier.

* * *

 

They fight; somehow, they always end up fighting. It’s half-hearted, though, neither of them really putting any force behind their blows. “Come with me,” he begs suddenly.

“I can’t,” she says, because she doesn’t know what else to say.

“Snoke ordered me to kill you,” he confesses, and she’s surprised by his willingness to admit that to her. He looks like...like he’s being torn in half.

“Come with me,” she pleads.

“I can’t,” he says, and she thinks she hears him sob through his mask as he raises his lightsaber. _You’re going to have to kill me_.

She shakes her head. “I can’t.”

_You can_. _You’re strong enough._

“I won’t,” she says, an air of finality. Then, using a trick she learned from him, she knocks him out with the Force. It’s a mistake, she realizes quickly, because no matter how strong she is, it’s impossible to carry him, giant of a man that he is. Somehow, she manages to half carry, half drag him back to her ship.

_You can’t have him,_ she pushes into the Force, hoping Snoke will hear her.

* * *

 

Later, the war over and Snoke finally, mercifully dead, Rey finds Kylo—Ben, she has to remind herself—alone, as he usually is. “When are we going to be honest with each other?” she asks, because she knows he’s hiding something from her and he won’t let her see any of his emotions when she’s long since given up hiding from him.

He looks at her sharply, concern knotting his brow. “I’m not sure I want you to see everything.”

“So you have to hide parts of yourself from me?”

He nods, instead of speaking, and he looks ashamed.

“I told you once I would have all of you or none of you,” she pauses, grasping his hand. “I want you to want _me_ to see everything.”

“I do, I just—I’m afraid you’ll leave if you know everything I’ve done.”

“Let _me_ make that decision.”

He nods again, a sheepish smile lighting his face. He opens their bond as she’s assailed by _everything_. Hate and anger, regret and sadness, despair and loneliness. But there’s happiness there too.

She kisses him, and the spark of happiness grows.

 

* * *

 

Rey had been so used to being _no one_ for so long—just a lonely scavenger girl—that it had been hard to look at herself as someone.

Friend.

Jedi.

Lover.

Resistance leader.

War hero.

She relished in her new titles that made her someone, to herself and to the little family she’d collected, even if some of them embarrassed her. She wasn’t alone anymore, dreaming of an escape. She’d forged her own path through blood and pain with the help of Finn and Poe and Leia and Luke and eventually Ben. Her family that abandoned her barely registered in her mind anymore. They had left her; all that mattered was the people who had stayed. She couldn’t remember who left her—wouldn’t be able to know them if they were in front of her and despite her unchanged hairstyle, she doesn’t think they would know her either.

Rey built a life. She had her friends. She had her missions. At night, she had Ben and he had her. She thinks she might feel—well, she’s not sure what she feels because she doesn’t quite have a name for it, but she feels _something_.

And then one day—she remembers. The block was gone, the dam destroyed. Her memories, long forgotten, and not because she wanted to but because they’d been _stolen_ from her, she knows that now, come rushing back.

Rey remembers a place. The Jedi Temple, before Kylo Ren and his Knights destroyed it, her mind supplies. She had been happy there. She had friends, and her training. She had her _best_ friend—the other Padawan’s made fun of him all the time but she _adored_ him most of all and would have fought anyone who insulted him in her presence. She can’t get his name—she reaches for it through her new old memories, but it slips through her grasp.

He’d adored her as much as she adored him—she could feel it then and she can feel the remnants of those emotions. He never was annoyed by her presence—he’d helped her when she didn’t understand something from her Jedi lessons. He’d done her _damn_ hair.

She’d had a home and a bed and plenty of food and friends and she’d had _him_.

And then it was taken.

Rey remembers with certain clarity lightsabers flashing, cutting down her friends one after another after another. She looks for _him_ , that someone that she adored, screams his name over and over again, but even now, she can’t quite grasp his name. Rey waits for a lightsaber to strike her down too, but the blow never comes. She remembers a First Order ship touching down on a desert wasteland, and she hates it because she’s only ever seen green before and she doesn’t want to be here.

She remembers a monster covered head to toe in black gripping her shoulder in his grasp; Rey can sense the fear and anger dripping off of him in waves but beyond that there’s something familiar about him—an edge of someone that she recognizes.

She whispers his name in her memories, a question. “Ben?” She remembers the mechanical voice that sounds nothing like Ben’s telling her to be quiet, to stop crying _girl_. She won’t though, and she can feel his fear growing. He’s in her head murmuring _sorry_ over and over with every memory that he masks in darkness until there’s nothing left but the sight of his retreating back and she’s left feeling dazed.

Now, Rey’s head swims with the surge of seven years of forgotten memories. People she didn’t think she had. A home she didn’t think she had. _Love_ she didn’t think she had.

She remembers Luke and Leia and Han and _Ben_. They all knew her and they kept it from her. Continued to keep it from her even after—everything.

_How dare you_? she pushes through the Force, knowing Luke and Leia and Ben will hear. _How dare you keep this from me_?

She throws up her walls; she doesn’t want to hear their excuses. Rey examines her memories—where once there was darkness, there is only light, and it should fill her with joy but it _doesn’t_. All she feels is hurt.

Rey rushes to the Falcon; she doesn’t take off she just…wants to be alone with her new thoughts.

“Rey?” she hears, and she looks up, anger etched into her every feature to find Ben there. She knew he would know how to find her, but she wishes she’d had longer to prepare for the inevitable.

“You had no right,” she spits out, and she’s surprised that more venom doesn’t fill her voice.

Ben walks toward her, both hands stretched out in front of him. “I did it to protect you.”

“From _you_! I would never have been in any danger if you hadn’t…” she trails off, too angry to speak but not really wanting to hurt him. Not even with the knowledge of something he had done. "Did you really think you could hide this from me forever?"

“I’ll leave,” he says finally after a beat. “You’ll never have to see me again.”

“I don’t want that,” Rey whispers, panicked at the thought of only remembering his retreating back once more despite her anger, fearful of being abandoned by him again. “I just need—time to process.”

Hesitantly, he moves to sit next to her on the floor. After a few minutes of tense silence, she grabs his hand. “You shouldn’t have kept it from me.”

He shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have.” He offers no excuses, and she’s glad. She’s not sure what she would have done with excuses.

“I know who I am now,” she says. “That’s what I always wanted.”

Ben nods, seemingly content not to say anything, letting her process.

“My family….” She trails off, not sure she really wants to know. But she’s done with not knowing. She’ll hear him, even if it’s painful.

“They died when you were just a baby,” he says softly, looking at her to mark her reaction. She sighs; saddened once more by people she never got to know.

“You were my best friend?” she asks, he nods again, squeezing her hand in his. “Why didn’t you…” again, she trails off, unable to voice the questions that plague her now. _Why didn’t you kill me? Take me with you? Tell me that Snoke was in your head?_

She must have opened her mind back up to him, though, because he hears her questions. “I couldn’t do any of that. I was supposed to…Snoke ordered me to kill all of you. But I couldn’t do it to _you_.” He doesn’t say it out loud, but she hears him think _I wish I couldn’t have done it to any of you_. “I had to hide you. I shouldn’t have left you there. I should have—“ he stops, rucking his free hand through his hair. “I should have told someone, anyone. And all I can say is that I’m sorry.”

“I loved you, you know?” she asks, but its more a statement than a question because _of course_ he knew.

“I thought you were the only one,” he responds.

_I love you still_ , she thinks, and it’s true despite the hurt she feels and maybe that’s why she knows it’s true. He looks at her sharply, surprised but _happy_. 

“I know,” he mumbles, red tingeing the tips of his ears. “I love you, too.”

She thinks she can add _beloved_ to her list of titles.


End file.
